


Fifteen Facts About Archie Goodwin

by Ekaterinn



Category: Nero Wolfe - Rex Stout
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 19:46:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ekaterinn/pseuds/Ekaterinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archie Goodwin’s actions may be regarded as reliable evidence; his words, both written and verbal, are less so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fifteen Facts About Archie Goodwin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlexandraLynch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexandraLynch/gifts).



**0.**  
A disclaimer: this collection does not attempt to do more than provide a simple sketch of the man in question.  Archie Goodwin’s actions may be regarded as reliable evidence; his words, both written and verbal, are less so.  Thus, while there are no outright lies in this list, neither are there whole truths.    The choice to read is yours.  

 

**1.**  
“Oh, Archie,” his mother says when she sees him: he is bloody-nosed and dirt-stained.  He accepts her ministrations with little grace, fidgeting this way and that.  When she finally asks him why, he says nothing about any insults to his person or hers.  He just says, “It couldn’t stand.”

 

**2.**  
Archie likes a dance, a chase, a fight, a kiss, and a punch. He takes satisfaction in both a  well-run operation and a well-played card.  Archie is always irreverent, except when he is not.  There’s a trick to being Archie.  Orrie Cather hasn’t figured it out yet, but he will.  When he does, things will _change_.

 

**3.**  
New York City is an assault on his senses.  Crowds of people, pushing and pulling, talking to each other, talking past each other.  Strange rhythms mix with familiar beats in nightclubs. The scent of roses and the smell of piss compete in the same street corner.  Apartments follow storefronts follow the river.  Flashing lights, dirty streets, gleaming Rolls-Royces.  Archie drinks it in, greedily, and sets his mind to memorizing all of it.  

 

**4.**  
Sally Corbett takes instructions with ease and acts on her own initiative when necessary.  Her curiosity is usually confined to her dark blue eyes. She is equally competent with a pistol and a parasol, but she never flirts back.  Archie will tell you that he resents her and Dol Bonner for revising his basic attitude on female operatives, but some part of him recognizes in her that 15 year-old boy, desperate and determined to get out of Ohio.

 

**5.**  
Archie likes women.  He likes talking to them, flirting with them, dancing with them, and more.  They occupy a fair amount of his free time, both when they don’t have a client and when they do.  He doesn’t consider himself the expert that Wolfe, for some reason, considers Archie to be, but he’ll give you a hundred to one that he can handle any woman that comes his way.

 

Lily Rowan crowds his luck, and he likes her better for it.

 

**6.**  
Cramer blusters and bluffs all he can, and only admits to a grudging respect for both Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.  The thing that sometimes keeps him up at nights isn’t their easy circumventing of the law or refusal to share information or even the fact that they have driven murderers to suicide (rather into the waiting arms of the law).  No, the idea the makes Cramer sweat is that one of Wolfe’s stunts will get him or Goodwin killed one day, and the man left behind will be utterly unpredictable.

 

**7.**  
When Saul and him play poker, Archie makes even money.  He doesn’t make more because Saul’s got a face practically designed by God for poker, and he doesn’t make less because he will push just to get a reaction, and as Saul says, that works more often that it’s got any right to.

 

**8.**  
“Satisfactory,” says Wolfe, and Archie gets warm all over.  (He will put it in different terms for the book).  

 

**9.**  
Fritz worries about Archie.  When he is out, who knows what terrible things he is eating?   If they have a client, Archie might be taken in by the law.  Perhaps a murderer will have better aim than the last three, and Archie will end up in the hospital.  Fritz has enough care for the man to not wish the food they serve in hospitals - not fit for animals! - on him.  Besides, the whole mood of the brownstone would be black until Archie recovered, and Fritz does not relish cooking under those conditions.  

 

**10.**  
Anyone who even so much as glanced at Archie Goodwin would know that he enjoyed driving automobiles.  It is obvious in the way he walks, the way he dances, perfectly in tune with his partner, that he is more than capable of handling any number of machines in all sots of conditions.   It is less obvious that he also derives satisfaction from the act of writing.  It is a more subtle thing, the way a hand holds a pen or how fingers strike keys.  Even the way he tilts his head as he composes these public reports is significant, if you are to have any hope of understanding Archie Goodwin at all.  

 

**11.**  
Some time ago, a man named Simon Jacobs should not have been stabbed to death, and his body dragged under a bush, but he was, and neither Wolfe or Archie has forgotten it.  More care taken in later cases will not erase the facts of this one.  Archie went to the funeral, bringing with him a rare orchid to lay on the grave.      

 

**12.**  
It is a miracle, Wolfe says, that they continue to tolerate each other.      

 

**13.**  
New York is a city dominated by newspapers, who constantly wrestle with each other for the latest scoop.  Lon Cohen of _The Gazette_ is an extremely busy man.  If he’s on the phone when Archie comes by his office, he won’t hang up.  But when his call is done, he’ll always listen.  

 

**14.**  
Archie dresses sharply, with stylishly tailored suits and expertly shined brogues. He wears a Panama in the summer and a fedora in the winter. Lily keeps him supplied with colorful, yet tasteful ties.  He knows his clothes are part of his charm.

 

**15.**  
In the end, all of Archie’s history, his relations, his appetites, his proclivities, and his actions are irrelevant. One fact alone is incontrovertible: no matter where Archie goes, who he goes with, what he does, or how long he stays, he will always, always return to that brownstone on West Thirty-Fifth Street, and to Wolfe.


End file.
